Some leaving, some staying

Chinese people have been told little about the SARS virus, prompting an Australian teacher there to return home.

However, another teacher is staying in China.

Bill Teece, 28, took a year off work at the National Australia Bank to teach English at Li Ming University in Quanzhou, in Fujian province, bordering Guangdong province where SARS originated.

Mr Teece's tenure at Li Ming was due to end in July, but instead he will leave the port city tomorrow because of SARS.

"It could go through a place like this like wildfire," Mr Teece said yesterday. "There's no clear guidance as to what people should actually do about it."

He said Chinese in Quanzhou seemed embarrassed by the idea of wearing masks. "I haven't seen anyone wearing a mask."

The "trigger" for Mr Teece's departure was when China sacked health minister Zhang Wenkang and Beijing deputy party head Meng Xuenong after officials disclosed a 10-fold leap in cases in Beijing.

Mr Teece said he knew of a "mysterious illness" that hit Guangdong in February, with rumours that a "very serious respiratory illness" had killed 100 people.

But he said yesterday that Quanzhou residents had little knowledge of the illness that has killed 110 Chinese. "The level of ignorance about it is amazing," he said. "They have this vague idea that there's some illness out there."

Jim Jenkin 37, from Footscray, RMIT's English language program manager at Wuhan University in central China, has taken the opposite tack, saying he is in China for "the long haul".

"We're scrubbing everything with disinfectant and keeping windows open and that sort of thing," he said, adding that people at the university were "alert, but not alarmed".

He said Australian and American staff at the university and its Nanhai campus near Guandong were calm.